The coming-of-age novel of a woman. Rita Münster leads a quiet life. After several years in the workforce, she lives with her father in his cozy suburban house with a garden and regularly helps out at a bookstore. Her everyday life is filled with sharp, detailed, unsentimental, and often malicious observations of her surroundings: relatives, couples in love, suburban heroes, friends, all driven by a passionate, repeatedly failing pursuit of happiness. It is only when she experiences a brief love affair with a man who soon disappears from her sight that she can develop an autonomous conception of happiness for herself.